Video in Murra-El-Elevyn

About the site

I dived in Murra-el-Elevyn cave in Easter this year, and wrote up one of my favourite shots from our dive here. Compared to the other Nullarbor caves, Murra has smaller, shallower passages with red, orange and pink walls. The limestone scalloping and shapes in the rock make for stunning pictures. The remote location means its rarely dived and when we arrived the water was crystal clear.

About the dive

In total we had four dives over three diving days in Murra. Of these, I spent two taking still photos, one exploring small nooks and crannies (camera free!) and one taking video footage. The aim of the video dive was to find the end of a side tunnel that we had discovered the day before. When we reached the end of the line, with Peter picking up temperature logging devices along the way, Ken tied in to the permanent line and reeled on into the restriction. While he wasn’t able to get very much further, the low wide flattener definitely lent itself to videographic glory as I was able to get the camera in alongside him.

Once we were done with the side tunnel we had a good swim around through some of the larger passages, both on the permanent line and reeling into line-free areas. Murra is a beautiful cave, and getting so much time to explore in here was great.

About the video

I did my best to find some new angles when taking this video. After pulling the camera out of the housing to film shots of us abseiling into the cave, I took divers from above, below and sideways. You can see Ken tying in to the line and squeezing through restrictions. As far as is possible with an ultra-wide angle lens, I took close ups of the line spinning off the reel and divers emerging from side tunnels.

One of my main objections to watching cave diving videos is that they tend to be long, uninterrupted wide shots of cave divers swimming through caves. The divers may be skilled and the caves attractive, but it doesn’t make for thrilling viewing. While I’m not claiming any great skill in video editing to bring out the thrills, I hope you enjoy this short video.

For those who didn’t see it in Alert Diver, I’m very proud to have this video featured in the current online edition, as a complement to my photographs that accompanied Peter Buzzacott’s article on cave diving.